The weather service has not confirmed that a tornado actually developed, according to National Weather Service meteorologist John Murray. But the storms definitely packed a punch, with the worst of it coming last Thursday evening, in the form of severe thunderstorm cells that pelted the North Fork with hail, torrential rain, strong winds -- with gusts in excess of 60 mph last Thursday -- and, literally, thousands of lightning strikes.

According to Mr. Murray, there were more than 700 lightning strikes (defined as cloud-to-ground or ground-to-cloud lightning) on the North Fork during the peak -- between 8 and 9 p.m. -- of last Thursday's storm, which downed trees, limbs and power lines and left hundreds without power on the North Fork. The heaviest damage was concentrated around Northville and Mattituck.

Courtsey photo marylou stewar Sound beach

"We heard a howling, and then a very loud sucking sound," said Victoria Martell of Sound Avenue in Northville. She said the walls of her home started vibrating. And then there was a loud crash, which turned out to be a very large limb that ripped from a maple tree and crashed through her roof. It was a few minutes before nine o'clock.

"It sounded like a car crashing into my house," she said Friday morning, surveying the damage around her yard, strewn with branches and leaves.

The storm tore Ms. Martell's mailbox from its post and tossed patio furniture around her yard. It snapped trees in half on a property across the road from Ms. Martell.

"A 100-foot pine tree was snapped in half," said Ronald Massab, her neighbor across the road. "It was unbelievable," he said. "We got hit with a tornado."

"At first I thought it was just an ordinary thunderstorm," said Mark Tuthill, who lives directly to the west of Ms. Martell. But the sky went black, the wind grew intense. He said he saw leaves and twigs flying by horizontally "at what seemed like 80 miles an hour." Then he saw the panes of his glass sliding doors starting to flex.

"That got me nervous," he said. He was just about to tell his family to get in the basement when it blew past and things quieted down. "It was a scary moment," he said.

The storm cut a 30-foot-wide swath through a stand of locust trees between his property and the North Fork Preserve, Mr. Tuthill said.

The storm was "very isolated," Mr. Tuthill said. As soon as it was over, he called his mother, who lives just to the west of the preserve.

"I asked her if she was OK," he said, "and she said, 'Why? What do you mean?' Nothing happened by her. This was no ordinary storm," he said.

But there were no reported sightings of a funnel cloud in the area last Thursday, the weather service's Mr. Murray said. A water spout was reported in the Sound north of Riverhead, however. Two water spouts were seen in the Sound on Monday. "They seemed like they were almost hugging the coast," Mr. Murray said.

Highway crews worked late into the night last week to clear debris from roadways to make them passable, according to both Riverhead and Southold highway superintendents. Riverhead highway superintendent Gio Woodson said his crews worked till 10 p.m., mostly on Sound Avenue at the eastern end of town.

There were at least two utility pole fires in Mattituck during the storm, Southold highway superintendent Pete Harris said. Also a volunteer firefighter, the superintendent said he was listening to his radio and monitoring the storm by watching The Weather Channel. He didn't hear reports of any structure fires, he said.

"But it was just a spectacular lightning show," he said.

There were 185 lightning strikes between 8:30 and 8:45 p.m. and 245 strikes between 8:45 and 9 p.m., according to Mr. Murray, the weather service meteorologist. In the hour between 9 and 10 p.m., he said, there were 1,059 strikes, but that was mostly when the storm had made its way out over the bay.

In Southold town, the Captain Kidd Estates area in Mattituck seemed to be hit hardest, Mr. Harris said.

"It was a very strong storm," said Themis Fieros of Ruth Road in that neighborhood. Four large trees on a wooded lot across from her home of 30 years came down and blocked the road. "[The highway crews] were clearing all night," she said. "They did a very good job."

The storm snapped the metal pole of a basketball backboard in front of her home, which crashed into and broke her fence. A large limb, torn from the tree next to her driveway, was balanced precariously among other branches.

Another Ruth Road resident, Spyros Kratsios, was using an electric chain saw to cut up a 20-foot limb that came down from the tree outside his home Friday afternoon, even as the sky darkened with another approaching storm.

"Quite a mess," he observed. "I'm not in a position to do this kind of a job. I'm an old man," said Mr. Kratsios, 87. "This is the worst I've seen since Hurricane Gloria in 1985."

denise@timesreview.com

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